CLAIRE DUNN Rewilding the Urban Soul. Reviewed by Tracy Sorensen
Part memoir, part urgent appeal, Claire Dunn’s new book explores how our urban lives can become more intimate with nature. For many of us, the world of lockdown has been about life inside four walls: comfy clothes, home schooling and baking experiments under the...
MICHAEL WARNER The Boys’ Club: Power, politics and the AFL. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Michael Warner doesn’t hold back in this examination of the scandals that have beset the AFL over the past two decades. In professional sport teams compete not only with each other on the field, but also off the field for fans, sponsors and players. Despite this...
CAROLYN COLLINS Save Our Sons: Women, dissent and conscription during the Vietnam War; MEREDITH BURGMANN and NADIA WHEATLEY Radicals: Remembering the Sixties. Reviewed by Kathy Gollan
Save Our Sons and Radicals remind us that the anti-war protesters of the 1960s and 70s were many and varied, and so too were their campaigns. These two books canvass the decade 1965-75, during which the Vietnam War dominated political life in Australia. We had...
EDMUND RICHARDSON Alexandria: The quest for the lost city. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Edmund Richardson recounts the hazardous life of ‘one of the greatest archaeologists of the age’. Nineteenth-century archaeologist James Lewis (alias Charles Masson), who sought traces of Alexander the Great in Afghanistan, was clearly an excellent storyteller, and in...
LAURA BATES Men Who Hate Women. Reviewed by Justine Ettler
Laura Bates has produced a confronting examination of extreme misogyny in Men Who Hate Women. Best known for creating the Everyday Sexism Project, in Men Who Hate Women Laura Bates has produced a book that is more polemic than a considered work of traditional...
RUTH BADER GINSBURG and AMANDA L. TYLER Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A life’s work fighting for a more perfect Union. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a trailblazer in the law in the US. This collection of speeches and key cases gives an insight into her work. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a justice of the Supreme Court of America from 1993 until her death in September 2020. In October 2019, the...
CASSANDRA PYBUS Truganini: Journey through the apocalypse. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
Cassandra Pybus places Truganini centre stage in Tasmania’s history, restoring the truth of what happened to her and her people. The subtitle Cassandra Pybus has chosen is a powerful pointer to how she sees Truganini: not as the ‘last of the Tasmanian...
CAROLYN EVANS and ADRIENNE STONE with JADE ROBERTS Open Minds: Academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australia. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Is freedom of speech under threat in Australia’s universities? In Open Minds authors Evans and Stone examine the evidence. In 2018 two incidents occurred that prompted the federal government to initiate an investigation into the internal operations of...
JOCK SERONG Lines to the Horizon: Australian surf writing. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
These six essays provide insights into the world of surfing both as individual passion and national symbol. In his introduction to this collection of Australian surf writing, Jock Serong asks whether surfing is a sport or a culture. It is estimated there are between...
BRIAN DEER The Doctor Who Fooled The World: Andrew Wakefield’s war on vaccines. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
Investigative journalist Brian Deer reveals how the anti-vax movement began with an elaborate fraud designed to enrich its perpetrator. One way to view the history of the world is as a struggle between superstition and science. In trying to understand what is...
STUART CLARK Beneath the Night. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Stuart Clark ranges across myths, archaeology and astronomy to chart the history of our obsession with the stars. On a mountain in ‘Australia’s Warrumbungles range’, English astronomer Stuart Clark stood under the clear night sky and experienced the sublime: There was...
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